Every Good Boy Does Fine
Every Good Boy Does Fine takes its title from the mnemonic taught to beginner music students in English-speaking countries to memorize the lines of the treble clef staff: E, G, B, D, F. The phrase carries the quiet authority of things learned so early they feel like nature — what Bourdieu called habitus: dispositions absorbed in childhood, before conscious choice begins, reproducing social hierarchies precisely because they feel like instinct.
The British version says the good boy deserves favour. One is an outcome; the other an entitlement. That the same five notes produce two such different ideological statements — absorbed by children on either side of the Atlantic without knowing another version exists — is precisely what the exhibition is interested in. What else was learned this way, and what does it cost?
Ellison presents a selection from his series Long Still Lifes (2023–2024). Each image is stitched from five photographs, echoing the way sheets of wallpaper are lined together on a wall. His work Untitled (Fall) depicts cut melons, transferware plates, Florentine greeting cards, spilled tea, and images of a boy at Eton College's Fourth of June celebration, where students row in boater hats. Eton was an explicit pipeline for imperial administration, designed to produce a ruling class confident in its right to govern—at home and abroad. Its boater hat traveled with it. Hong Kong schools established under British rule adopted the hat directly, dressing colonized children in English clothes to make them legible within the imperial order and strip away local identity.
Ojo presents a view into his mental Mobius strip or Ouroboros studded with objects of shifting value and cultural relevance in the works titled variously His Dark Materials and Overdressed/Dressed/Undressed/£90000 — a series collapsing object and subject, discarding utility in favor of form, cameras on display waiting to be photographed, jewelry that mocks as it entices, music stands as impossibly thin bodies belaboring the concept of authenticity until the question itself loses meaning, evaporates. Meanwhile male-focused "novelty?" manuals look on: The Dangerous Book for Boys, Evasion and Escape - FM 21-77 US Army Field Manual (1965 Civilian Reference Edition): The Unabridged Handbook on Survival, Staying Unseen, and Military Escape Strategy, Machiavelli’s The Prince.
How do you detect a two way mirror? What are you going to do about it now?
Every Good Boy Does Fine marks the first exhibition in Hong Kong for both artists.
